Sep 14, 2015

Ziggy
Ziegenfuss led us in the Pledge of allegiance, and Tom McMurray led our
invocation. We observed a moment of silence for Ron Nicholson (Valley of
the Moon) who passed away recently. Ron had been involved with our own
Kim Bauriedel in our numerous projects with our Siberian Rotary clubs since
2001. Tom also asked us to keep Steve Brodhag (SW Eureka) in our thoughts
as he faces some health challenges.

Liana
Simpson was our only visiting, well kind of visiting, Rotarian.

Andy,
our exchange student from Taiwan, joined us. He is doing well and getting
use to Eureka High. His first host family is Christian and Sally
Hill.

Carol
Rische also celebrated her 15 year Rotary Anniversary with our club.

Nancy
Dean talked to us about our Sign Smith Fund grants which applications are due
for soon.

President
Jay talked about District Governor nominations, and that our club was on the
District Nominating committee this year. If you are interested in
pursuing the DG path please contact President Jay.

The
Boys and Girls Club’s fundraiser is coming on September 26th.
It will be held at the Elks Club starting at 5pm. Both President Jay and
Dennis Hunter have purchased tables and we are all encouraged to attend.

There
is a District 5130 Lake County Fire Relief fun being set up. More info
will be coming soon on how to donate.

Linda
Wise turned in her Red Badge for a much more appealing Blue Badge. Way to
go Linda!

President
Jay then had Greg Williston on his feet to talk about what he does and his
hobbies. Greg is the Regional Manager for SHN Consulting Engineers and
Geologists, which means he manages the project managers. They work with
small communities in Northern California. They employ 100 folks, 50 of
whom are at their Eureka location. In his spare time Greg works on his
house, does woodworking, and polishes fossilized sand dollars with a granite
polisher.

Sean
McLaughlin was on his feet next. Sean is the Executive Director at Access
Humboldt. He manages the local benefits of our area cable franchise
agreement with Suddenlink. Access Humboldt is located on the Eureka High
campus, has four public access cable channels, and plenty of equipment to help
you edit video and content you would like to see on their public access
channels. Sean has long been a supporter of internet adoption efforts and
enjoys reading on technology and associated regulations. He moved to
Humboldt from the great State of Hawaii.

Then
it was time for a little non-gambling to benefit the County Science Fair.
George Owren won the Four Way Test coin, $10 went to John Winzler, and Greg
Seiler missed picking the joker for $350, but received a cool four-way test
paperweight.

Our
program was from Rosemary Den Ouden. She is the Director of the Humboldt
Independent Physicians Association. They help to manage health plans,
improve health care delivery, and recruit physicians in Humboldt County.
98% of health care providers in Humboldt are members of their organization.

The
title of her presentation was the Super Utilization Project. The premise
behind this project was to track and analyze members of our community that are
disproportionately frequent users of emergency rooms in our county. She
noted that, as a nation, health care costs have risen 42% in the past 6
years. Currently this averages about $8000 per year in medical costs per
American. Norway has an annual per capita expense of $4000 for health
care related expenses. The US life expectancy rate, when compared to
other industrialized countries, is not commensurately higher as compared to
what we are paying per capita.

The
top 1% of health care users are responsible for 20% of the dollars spent
nationally on health care. The top 5% of health care users are
responsible for 50% of national health care expenses.

This
Super Utilizer tracking project worked to identify the most frequent users of
our local emergency rooms in order to reduce ER utilization, and to understand
why they were relying so heavily on the ER’s for their health care needs.
In a 6 month period some of the patients that they tracked had gone to the ER
more than 80 times, and average of once every 2.25 days. The study found
that most of the Super Utilizers had a primary care physician. The
average Super Utilizer’s health care expenses, incurred on an annualized basis,
were $28,000.

The
study found that assigning a care coordinator to frequent ER users was key in
reducing the number of times they went to the ER. Care coordinators
primary role is to translate and clarify for the patient what their options
were to achieve a better end result for their medical issues. This also
reduced annualized costs per participant.

Lastly,
she noted that mental health and substance abuse treatment is not available as
they need to be in Humboldt County. This lack of availability of
treatment contributes greatly to ER overutilization.

Upcoming Guest Speakers

**Meetings are on Monday at the Elk's Lodge in Eureka**

Backpacks For Kids

Backpack assembly is held during the school year at 4:00pm on Thursdays at Humboldt Moving & Storage on Albee Street in Eureka, between 14th & 15th Streets. For more information, please contact Mindy Bussman.